According to the lovely statistical-analysis tools at WordPress.com, this is officially going to be my 163rd post of the year. And the post I’ve chosen below for Throwback Thursday may be one of my top three favorites of the whole bunch.

Christmas is my favorite time of year. Strawberries are my favorite fruit. And today’s Throwback Thursday post is one of my absolute favorite posts of Every48…so far, of course. (Image courtesy of Apolonia at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

It’s about conjuring up our inner badass when everything else in our lives is telling us not to take care of ourselves. It turns out we have far more reserves of energy and light and happiness and general awesomeness than we even realize, just stored up in our cells and our bones, just waiting to get started. Just waiting to get called upon. And on a day when I was completely and legitimately exhausted this year, I somehow called up my inner badass and ran a race I had no business running, far better than I had any business running it. On paper, that is. I think my inner badass wasn’t surprised at all.

So enjoy this Throwback post – and then, get out there and get your inner badass on.

Sometimes, you just have to conjure up your inner badass

[First published on March 3, 2014]

Anatomy of a weekend headed for workout disaster:

Yes. I completely understand. You try doing what I did from Friday night till Saturday night and tell me YOU want to run a 15K on Sunday. Riiiiiiight.

Bowling with friends on Friday evening; no sleep on Friday night (I tossed and turned, no idea why); getting up at 5:15 a.m. on Saturday morning to lead two Weight Watchers meetings; trying to fit in a nap (unsuccessful); giving a talk on getting started with a fitness program at the King County Library; picking up my race number for the Seattle Hot Chocolate 15K; trying to fit in another nap (unsuccessful); and going to two birthday parties on Saturday night.

Whoa. I was so exhausted by 11 p.m. on Saturday night that I gave myself permission to do something I have never done: to not show up for a race I signed up to run.

I really did. I was that tired. And then, something funny happened.

My inner badass showed up.

My inner badass looks like this. Really, she does.

My inner badass is probably a lot like your inner badass. It doesn’t necessarily like to be roused – you might not even know it’s there at first. it could be a stealth badass, like Scarlett Johansson as The Black Widow in The Avengers. (Seriously, tell me you knew she was going to kick major butt in that opening scene before she actually did.) But then, like the Black Widow, or the Kraken, or the Green Monster, or the Tracker Jacker nest in The Hunger Games, something happens. Your inner badass wakes up and kicks major butt, and leaves you in a tailspin, because you don’t even know where it came from – but it swooped in, a tornado of energy and passion and don’t-you-even-think-about -not-doing-this, and before you know it, you’ve achieved the very thing you were completely sure you couldn’t do.

This cat has nothin’ on your inner badass.

Your inner badass is being trained every single time you choose to exercise when you could just not exercise, make an excuse, and tell yourself that you’re going to do it “later.” Every time you exercise anyway, you are training your inner badass to accept nothing less than your full commitment. Even on the days when you feel like, ahem, sleeping in.

My inner badass was evidently very alarmed on Sunday morning at the fact that just because I made some poor sleep-related decisions over the 24 hours from Friday night to Saturday night, I was willing to throw in the towel, sleep in, and then spend all day Sunday “trying” to get a workout in, when a group workout with a ton of other like-minded people in my city was sitting right there waiting for me. All I had to do was find a parking space in Seattle Center.